The Pinnacle Incident
The Pinnacle Incident is a system siege performed by the soliders of the Pinnacle system, primarily Pinnacle II, against the military system of Prominence. This event lasted a year, between 3830 and 3831 and was lead by Grand General Alexander Breckman. The Spark Commander Alexander Breckman, current commander of the Pinnicular Army, had grown anxious for a fight, the last military conflict happening over Boshen 40 years ago. The UUR having heard of the several other rebellions happening within the UE but not taking advantage of it by sending in invasion fleets had annoyed Alexander enough to start begin a crusade towards the center of the UE Empire. Requisitioning all of the Pinnicular Army Theater, and asking the Admiral stationed in Pinnacle, Brian Lapen, for naval support against any reinforcements, he had began his crusade. Without bothering the inform any of the UUR leaders, knowing they would warn against any violence on the UE, he had flown to the nearest worthy target, Prominence. Prominence Prominence is a 4 planet system developed for one purpose, developing an army and using it to wage war against the other empires, and to defend a choke point leading to civilian systems. Containing two terrans, a lava and a barren turned arid, the system is ruled and populated by soldiers, and their weapons. Prominence III, a lava, and Prominence IV, a terran, have been both transformed into Fortresses, in and out. Prominence II is a terran planet with several bases, training camps and military alike, and Prominence I is an arid with a mixture of both topside and underground bases. Prominence was targetted because Alexander wanted to show the UE the power of the soliders of Pinnacle, revenge for having forgotten his people. If Alexander captures Prominence, the UE would lose a major supplier of manpower as well as their last line of defense. Most of their space fleet having been recalled, taking advantage of a cease fire, to deal with the several nearby rebel forces had left the system defenseless. The Welcoming Party The system fleets, having detected the UUR coming in from deep space, had sent a message for reinforcement while preparing to engage in fleet battle. The UE admiral, Kerban Koshep, was an aspiring commander, from the system nonetheless, but he didn't have a record as strong as Lapens. The UE fleet had set defenses in a concave to increase their hit chances. Despite their main fleet having left, they still consisted of 5 battleships, 27 cruisers and 40 frigates. With them, they had 15 orbital defense platforms on the planet nearest the UUR, Prominence III, as well as 6-7 on each other planet. Kerban, not being ignorant to Lapens succes, had seperated his fleet into 5 forces, and spread command between 4 other vice admirals. The UUR fleet wasn't as big in the forms of firepower, consisting of: Lapens new Dreadnaught, the Penance of Zevelas, ''two battleships, 20 cruisers and 27 frigates, as well as 50 armed and armored invasion ships. Lapen, knowing that his fleet would get stredded by the enemy in their current position, as well as knowing the invasion ships would be used to board the enemy in dire situations had taken his time to think. With only a week to destination, Lapen had decided to taunt the enemy into attacking him instead, ordering the fleet to stop. For three days, both fleets had stared each other down as the Prominence III neared where the fleet would have been at the end of the week. Kerban, not being the cocky commander that other colleagues his age would be, had sent his fastest ship to message Lapen, warning him to back down or be shot down. Lapen, unwilling to lose an advantage, destroyed the ship. As soon as the day 5 mark hit, Lapen had ordered his men full speed towards Prominence IV, whos orbit was directly towards the fleet. Kerban, having expected this had sent his fleet half a day before towards it. Arrival had happened only two days later, the orbital platforms being blown apart without any difficulty. With only a day and a half before the arrival of the UE, the UUR had begun the invasion, blasting apart the landing pad as well as enough space to create a base of operations and an area safe for landing. As the missles flew, a scout ship had arrived with a message: Prominence II is in open rebellion and has joined the cause of the UUR, and had sent all the ships they could spare. Several giant craters were all that were left of a 575km squared area. Twelve ships were sent to land the 15,000 troops that would lead the invasion of Prominence IV. Fireworks over Prominence IV As soon as the troops departed, a third of the force was sent to clear out the nearby defenses, succeeding unscathed against the dazed enemies. During the firefights, the rest of their forces began digging underground to create their own underground base, as well as attempting to dig into the UE base. Luckily for the ground troops, they dug directly into a transport hub for quick transportation between the landing pad and nearby bases. As their artillery bombarded the other bases, the remaining 10,000 troops split up again and assaulted the two nearest bases. Attacking minimally defended rail tracks, they were able to mow down unsuspecting UE soliders from behind and create temporary homes in the shelters. Not expecting the rail tracks, they quickly adapted to the situation, taking of the tracks and tires of their vehicles, and began hit and run tactics, followed up by their forces coming following up and clearing the rest of the bases of troops. This strategy had lead to Pinnacular forces capturing all but the 6 main bases within two days. While the men on the grounded attempted to relay their progress to the fleet above ground, the UE had arrived in range and began jamming the UUR fleets. Luckily for them, Lapen had created his strategy before then and they began as soon as his ship began moving. The fleet flew behind the planet to hide from UE sight and did their own sensor jamming, and began flying to the south pole of the planet to attack the UE from its unguarded bottom. Kerban expecting them to split up from behind in order to flank the fleet, ordered his fleet into two concaves facing both the east and west side of the planet. Only too late did Kerban realise his mistake, as missles and kinetics flew at the unprepared ships, blowing up several sections of ships, as well as entire ships before Kerban ordered the engage. Lapen ordered his fleet into a V tipped square, cruisers and battleships at the front, Lapen at the lead, and the frigates and invasion ships behind, providing missile support while trying to keep as many ground troops alive. Kerban had his ships in a wall bending inward as to counter the UUR attacking their weak spot. What neither commander was prepared for was the Planet-to-Orbit missile launchers and artillery that are in the Pinnacle ships. The cannons, set up at the most strategically positioned base, began firing larger and faster varients of the armaments aboard the ships easily destroyed at least one ship on impact. But this lead to their position to be revealed, and the remaining UE forces immediately began bombarding the base. But the Pinnacle troop used the artillery to their advantage, finding a pattern to their firing, and using it to blow explosions to create unguarded entrances into the base. With these, the troopls easily overran the overly confident guards with only a few fire fights. In orbit, the battle had become too close after planetary support, the UE had lost 2 battleships, 6 cruisers and 11 frigates at the start, but they had far more firepower to the UUR which comprised mainly of invasion ships. As the Dreadnaught ''Penance of Zevelas took most of the brunt of the UE, the UUR only lost one battleship, 7 cruisers and 4 frigates. But as the frigates neared firing range, they began showing the true power of an alliance with sophons and amoeba: the combined force of kinetics, missles, and plasma against tightly packed enemies. As the engineering teams on UE ships began reporting fires and overheating in defense modules, another fleet warped in. A Pinnacle War Fleet, previously in a hidden asteroid base being retrofitted using experimental warp technology stolen from secret Sophon labs by Horatio before the system became UUR, arrived with a true invasion force. As the UE fleet began launching their escape pods, Alexander began broadcasting to Lapen in the now unjammed radio systems. Explaining that the "invasion fleet" was actually mainly comprised of dummy ships, the landed ships being the only exception. As the escape pods began flying, Lapen finally relaxed, ordering his fleet to capture the war prisoners. Moving on to Prominence III, the orbital platforms were easily destroyed, and the forces on the planet had surrendered. But for the first week following was filled with a war being fought between loyalists and UUR sided forces, eventually won with the arrival of a Pinnacular Brigade. Civil War Brews Arrival at Prominence I was lead with conflict within the ranks of Pinnacle soldiers. The commander on the planet was a commander during the glorious days of Pinnacle, and his prestige is well known. Collins Guerero was the star jewel of the Pinnacle, who had believed that he would bring new glory to their system, but when he was assigned to teach new soliders in a mainly ignored system, they had lost hope. Now the thought that they were about to fight, and possibly even kill their hoped for saviour, had unnerved the Pinnacular forces until they had a sense of anxiety. But Collins was not willing to make his home infamous by joining the UUR outright. He would show their brilliance in either defeating his opponents, or surviving for several days. When the time finally came, the siege that followed was bloody. Deploying the entire Army Theatre, it immediately became a war of attrition. Whenever either side attempted to make a push, they were forced to take cover behind the several natural stone pillars and trenches, as well as any made during the fire fights. Several base breaches were attempted, but ended up with both sides expending ammo on the first couple rows of troops, and having sword fights between the two sides. After a week, both sides deployed siege weapons and tanks, increased casualties signficantly. Alexander, not wanting to further risk the lives of his injured brethern ordered a transport to pick them up; as it was flying in orbit, shields switched to fire guards for entry into atmopshere, Collins ordered his anti ship weapons to fire at it. The rounds began hitting the undefended ship, and it began falling out of control, and to the horror of Collins, straight towards the front of his base. As the ball of fire that was the ship crashed into the walls, the shockwave knocked all men off their feet, as well as defeaning them with the explosion that followed. As both sides picked themselves up out of their daze, they gawped at the giant breach, realising that it was over. The UE wouldn't be able to hold their destroyed gates, especially not after losing their anti vehicle weapons in the crumble. Nevertheless, the fighting that followed lasted an entire week, Pinnacular troops moving from corridor to corridor, room to room, capturing every section of the base. But they were not met without resistance, Collins had several tactics, including sending a squadron of swordsmen to the enemy causing them to draw their own swords, and as the squad died, the fire teams waiting behind them would mow down the unsuspecting men. Victory Through Defeat In the end Alexander had achieved victory, partly due to the untrained troops in the UE base, but he had lost nearly three quarters of his Army Theatre. He did gain something though, he gained a new commander, Collins having surrendered before losing all of his men, as well a new system for the UUR and created a fear for the name Pinnacle. Results The UE had lost choke point between the UUR and the rest of the UE empire, as well the fleet guarding it. Losing 5 battleships, 27 cruisers 40 frigates, as well as 34 orbital platforms and 450,000 troops. The UUR had lost 2 battleships, 14 cruisers, 17 frigates, 33 dummy frigates, and 240,000 of their 350,000 men. But they gained a system, and caused further panic in the Empire.